JO'B sounds off again

The amazing thing about 1984 is that Orwell presumed that when the totalitarian era began...he presumed that the media that just pumps out lies to a completely complacent public, he presumed that media would be built by the government.

He presumed that the manipulative dishonest media would be created by the manipulative, dishonest politicians.

Even George Orwell didn't foresee a world in which the population, the punters, the voters would create their own manipulative, dishonest media.

Even George Orwell didn't foresee how mad things have gone in 2016, where an election has been pretty much decided on the other side of the Atlantic, and arguably a referendum has been decided here, based on absolute lies.

That kind of opinionated rant is fine for LBC, of course, but not for the BBC - except that James O'Brien behaves just the same when broadcasting for the BBC. Try this, for example, from Tuesday's Newsnight:

So where are we? Donald Trump has already expressed reservations about making the White House his permanent home. The secret service is, thus, reportedly contemplating temporary closure of New York's Fifth Avenue whenever he chooses to weekend there. His daughter, Ivanka, has already used the first family-in-waiting TV interview to flog copies of the jewellery she wore for it. And, of course, pretty much the only people who don't consider his new strategy chief to be a racist misogynist are precisely the people who wouldn't care a jot if he was.

Now, if Newsnight added a counterbalancing right-wing shock jock to its roster of regular presenters, that might make things better. But that's not going to happen. And, even if it did happen, they'd doubtless behave much more fairly towards opposing voices than JO'B ever does.